An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris

Published in Great Britain in 2013; published by Knopf on January 28, 2014

An Officer and a Spy is a fictionalized account of the Dreyfus affair. Since the unjust conviction of Alfred Dreyfus is a matter of record, the novel holds few surprises. It nevertheless tells a compelling story and serves as a reminder that claims of national security and the need for secret trials too often mask the weakness of the evidence upon which the government relies, as well as the improper motivations that contribute to the prosecution. In the case of Dreyfus, anti-Semitism and the desire for political gain fueled the false accusation that Dreyfus passed military secrets to the Germans and encouraged investigators to discount evidence that pointed to the guilt of a less consequential suspect.

An Officer and a Spy tells the story in the first-person, from the perspective of Major Marie-Georges Picquart, who attended (and played a small part in) Dreyfus' court martial. After Picquart is promoted and placed in charge of the Statistical Section -- the French military's espionage service -- his new job brings him into contact with disturbing evidence that casts doubt upon Dreyfus' guilt. Neither Picquart's growing realization that the real traitor is still at large nor the likelihood that an innocent man has been imprisoned are of interest to the officers whose careers depend on covering up their mistakes -- even if the cover-up requires them to destroy Picquart.

The drama in An Officer and a Spy is low-key but palpable. More important than the historical facts (which are deftly handled but not really the subject of fiction) is Picquart's internal struggle, his burgeoning sense of guilt at the role he played in securing Dreyfus' conviction and the career boost he received from it. The conflict between Picquart's duty to his superiors (who just want him to shut up) and his higher duty to truth and justice provides the novel's moral focus as well as its dramatic tension. That Picquart's life is complicated by an affair he has long been having with a friend's wife adds an element of interest to his character, in part because it provides his enemies with ammunition to use against him.

Robert Harris sums up the novel's thesis in a sentence near the end: "There are occasions when losing is a victory, so long as there is a fight." Picquart seems fated to lose everything he values -- everything except his integrity and sense of honor. Through Picquart, Harris makes the case that fighting what appears to be a hopeless fight is preferable to surrendering virtue. Justice is often difficult to achieve -- sometimes it is won belatedly, sometimes only in the judgment of history, and sometimes not even then -- but the fight for justice is an end in itself. An Officer and a Spy is a stirring illustration of that lesson.

RECOMMENDED

Red Now and Laters by Marcus J. Guillory

Published by Atria Books on March 11, 2014

From the first sentence ("God's tears were brown."), the prose in Red Now and Laters screams for attention. Sometimes the screams hurt the reader's ears but it is always lively and much of it is innovative. The novel opens in 1977 as a flood in the Houston neighborhood of South Park forces John Boudreaux Jr. ("John Frenchy") to carry his son, Ti' John, to safety across the rising brown waters. "John Frenchy" is a star on the black rodeo circuit. His family is Creole and he is a transplant from Louisiana, as are many black families in South Park.

The story resumes three years later, when Ti' John is eight. The reader jumps into Ti' John's life again at various ages from 12 to 17 as he encounters random death, has difficulty and success in different schools, seeks acceptance on Ricky Street (home to kids with tough reputations), serves as an undistinguished altar boy, learns to fight, grasps as much as he can about the mysterious ways of girls, and comes to terms with his family. Ti' John is an imaginative child trying to understand the workings of the adult world. In many respects, he is a memorable character. Along the way Ti' John and other characters riff on topics of interest and amusement, including the relationship between gospel music and blues (both "testaments to the human spirit and personal realizations"), the relationship between luck and race, breasts, sex, hospital waiting rooms, and the difference between Cajun and Creole.

Interludes take place in Opelousas a generation earlier, where John Frenchy and his future wife Patrice are growing up. Eventually the story retreats to 1870 where Jules Saint-Pierre Sonnier (whose biological father was a Boudreaux) arrives in Louisiana from Haiti. Sonnier is a practitioner of voodoo and his story is freakish. Others in the Sonnier line (who generally share freakishness as a family trait) play roles in the story, sometimes after they have died. Footnotes scattered through the novel translate French phrases and enlighten the reader about (among other topics) Creole history and the rules of dice.

Issues of skin color form one of the novel's themes. Patrice wants to be lighter so she will be accepted by the lighter members of her extended family; Ti' John wants to be darker so he won't be beaten by the darker kids on Ricky Street. The role of religion in the black community and of superstition in the Creole community is another theme, as is the relationship between religion and superstition. To an extent, this is a "black man coming of age in a white society" story, a theme that has been done many times, but the novel makes a strong point about the difficulty (but not necessarily impossibility) of escaping what seems to be a preprogrammed life, and does so in an original way. The novel's moral is: whether or not fate exists, whether or not we can escape our fate, "we continue into the unknown with delusions of certainty as a safety blanket and we hope the next day will be kinder than the last."

There is a supernatural element to the story, both in the healing powers that John Frenchy and Ti' John display and in the occasional appearances of a dead Sonnier in their lives. Given the role that superstition has played in Creole culture, that aspect of the story is not out of place, but I can't say that it entirely worked for me. Ti' John's connection to the supernatural is underplayed for most of the novel, making it a bit jarring when it gains a more prominent role late in the story. I suspect that the witchcraft is intended as a metaphor but this might have been a better novel without it.

While Marcus Guillory's writing is strong, occasional passages try too hard to be startling and succeed only at being awkward. Sometimes the story seems a bit scattered but the story's energy and power overcome its structural problems. In the end, Red Now and Laters isn't a perfect novel, but it is well worth reading.

RECOMMENDED

Mistworld by Simon Green

First published in 1992; published by Open Road Media on December 17, 2013

Mistworld is a rebel planet protected from the Empire by a psionic shield. There isn't much to protect since Mistworld is essentially a medieval village in which security guards carry pikes. Of course they do, they used to be gladiators. They fight with swords and shields because energy guns and force fields take time to recharge. Riiiight.

Meanwhile, the Empire has just wiped out the planet Tannin and a refugee ship has made its way to Mistworld but the espers who scanned the ship detected a mysterious presence. Fortunately, Investigator Topaz, the strongest esper in the universe and a legendary Siren who once wiped out 500 minds at once, is there to protect Mistworld. To show what a badass she is, Topaz says things like "blood and terror to our enemies" (forgetting to preface this with "forsooth"). Sergeant Michael Gunn was married to Topaz, but Gunn is dead now, giving Topaz a chance to feel sad while lusting for revenge, having sworn "an oath of vengeance." Riiiight.

Meanwhile, a burglar in Mistport named Cat steals a memory crystal for a fence named Cyder who wants to sell it to Jamie Royal who is retrieving it for Dr. Leon Vertue who owns Mistworld's body bank. Does everyone in this novel have a ridiculous name? Pretty much. There's a mercenary named Blackjack, Port Director Gideon Steel, Captain Starlight, Councillor Eileen Darkstrom, Count Stefan Bloodhawk, Suzanne du Wolfe, a dude named Gaunt, a giant named Stargrave, and the list goes on. Most of the creative effort in this novel went into creating silly names for the characters.

The memory crystal plays an important role toward the end of the novel, but (and I need to be vague here to avoid spoilers) I was left wondering how its intended recipient managed to get along without it, given the apparently critical need for the crystal to be in place at all times. That's one of a few head-scratchers that are glossed over in an effort to deliver a plot that is heavy on action but light on thought.

Simon Green strives for literary eloquence, but his prose is too often forced and stilted. He should see an editor for his adverb addiction. At other times he depends on clichéd phrases ("paragon of virtue") to make his point. Dialog -- "Damn you, Blackjack, you've ruined everything" -- is lifted from every bad "direct to DVD" movie you've ever seen.

The plot is generally coherent and at times entertaining despite bordering on the ridiculous. Too often, however, the story is based on familiar fantasy themes with some Star Wars buzzwords added to disguise it as science fiction. Fight scenes are mundane and characters lack development beyond the standard personalities with which stock characters come equipped.

I know this novel (first published in 1992) has a following. I can understand why fans of fantasy who don't mind excessive adverbs or the substitution of espers for magicians would enjoy it. I can understand why those who view it as a parody might think Green achieved something with Mistworld, but I like parodies that make me laugh and, other than laughing at the characters' names, I found little here to amuse. Mistworld isn't an awful book but there is not enough here that is fresh or interesting to earn a recommendation for sf fans.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Chase by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg

Published by Bantam on February 25, 2014

Marketing this novel as a thriller (or even a romantic thriller) is seriously misleading. The Chase is too cute for its own good -- certainly too cute for readers who are looking for a plausible story.  The Chase is so over-the-top that I was unable to buy into the plot or the characters. The cheesy banter between Kate and Nicolas, meant to be witty and suggestively sexual, seems designed to appeal to preteens. The Chase is intended as light reading -- a cross between romantic comedy and a thriller -- but it's so fluffy and insubstantial I felt like I was reading a cloud.

Special Agent Kate O'Hare is chasing the dreamy Nicolas Fox and not just because she would like to cuddle up against his lean and firm body. Fox seems to have robbed a bank but, as O'Hare knows, he has stolen from a safe deposit box at the FBI's direction to obtain evidence because the FBI is apparently unwilling or unable to get a warrant to search for it. The crime (the details of which are left unexplained) is ridiculous and O'Hare should go to prison for having any part in it. How she manages to reconcile her profound sense of law-and-order with her willingness to subvert the Constitution while being a party to a bank robbery is something Evanovich doesn't explain. I always have difficulty cheering for a hypocrite and O'Hare's self-righteous justification for breaking the law (repeatedly) doesn't endear me to her.

Now the FBI needs O'Hare to commit a crime that's even more preposterous: stealing a bronze rooster from the highly placed man who bought it from the thief who stole it from the Smithsonian. The man is so highly placed (think Karl Rove) that the FBI doesn't want to "embarrass" the country by arresting him. Eventually yet another theft needs to be orchestrated and the novel turns into a low-budget version of Ocean's Eleven. Unfortunately, the method used to commit the crime is far from innovative and not even remotely credible.

Evanovich works so hard to make O'Hare "tough but feminine" and Fox "devious but charming" that both characters seem inauthentic. They fit nicely into their stereotyped boxes but they lack believable personalities. O'Hare's "I just got stabbed and killed my assailant -- let's have champagne!" attitude wears thin quickly. The chemistry between the smitten FBI agent and the rakish conman with "lightly tousled" hair is utterly predictable and, for that reason, uninteresting. The villain is about as deep as Snidely Whiplash.

The parts of the novel that are meant to be funny failed to amuse me, but I often chuckled at parts that were not intended to provoke laughter (O'Hare's superdad carries hand grenades in his golf bag and the Karl Rove character, no longer in government, can instantly launch a predator drone armed with Hellfire missiles within the United States by making a phone call). Much of the novel is just too easy for O'Hare and Fox ("oh, don't worry, the secret door won't be guarded") and too many things that shouldn't be easy (like stealing from safe deposit boxes) are glossed over without explanation. Part of the novel takes place in China but it might as well be Kansas City. The local color sounds like it was cribbed from a tourism website. Evanovich does better when she describes the high-end outlet mall in Camarillo, California, a place she has apparently been. The ending is even sillier than the story that precedes it. The story moves quickly and parts of it are fun, but there are not enough of those parts to recommend the novel as a whole.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Honor Among Thieves by James S.A. Corey

Published by Del Rey on March 4, 2014

The full title of this novel is Star Wars: Empire and Rebellion: Honor Among Thieves. It is the second novel in the Empire and Rebellion series. I did not read the first and I generally do not try to keep up with Star Wars novels (that would be a full time commitment in itself), but I read this one because I admired the work that the writing team known as James S.A. Corey did in The Expanse novels.

Most of Honor Among Thieves concerns a potential new weapon -- developed by a long-departed race -- that both the Empire and the Rebel Forces would like to acquire. A Rebel spy named Scarlet Hack tracked down information about its location but the information was stolen before she could steal it herself. Now the Empire is after the thief, along with Scarlet and Han Solo (and Chewbacca, of course). The chase leads them (and the Empire) to a planet that is hosting a conference attended by Princess Leia, who is there to do some fundraising. There are, naturally enough, a wealth of fights, space battles, smugglers, bounty hunters, dive bars, odd aliens, droids, and all the other elements that make Star Wars enjoyable.

In the meantime, the Rebel Forces need to find a new secret base. In an early chapter, Leia dispatches Luke Skywalker to check out a possible planet, but it's in the galaxy's equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. That storyline disappears for a time, but Luke resurfaces in the final third of the novel as the story threads weave together.

Corey's skill with characters serves the story well. Han Solo is skeptical, sarcastic, roguish-- in a word, perfect. Han isn't the introspective type but Corey has him thinking about his life -- what he might have been but for meeting Luke Skywalker, what he might become. His friendships and alliances are still uncertain but he stands on the verge of change, of acquiring meaning in a self-centered life.

The story moves at hyperspeed. The plot -- well, this is an adventure story so there isn't much of a plot. The outcome is predictable but that makes it no less fun. I was easily and willingly swept along by the narrative. Yet despite its lack of depth, Honor Among Thieves does make a salient point. The Universe needs smugglers and thieves. They represent rebellion against order ... and thus freedom. It is a lesson that even the uptight Leia can appreciate.

RECOMMENDED